Last night's beading class was chandelier earrings. Which are frigging enormous. I, as usual, went over the top with mine, having been inspired by (a) a picture of dangling flower beaded earrings in a magazine and (b) the amazing necklace the teacher made with vines and flowers. Everyone in class loved them. I am going to try to make something similar for the craft fair, but uh, perhaps smaller. They're a LOT bigger than I'd normally wear, but hell, I have short hair now, I can do that without risking injury.

I checked several weather reports today before I got dressed. They all said "slight winds and 80 degrees." So fine, I wear a short skirt and the big ol' chandelier earrings...and it's FRIGGING WINDY AND COLD OUT. One of the earrings had a chain unattach after a big gust, but at least I could fix it. Oh well, at least I looked good, right? (And didn't end up ripping off an earlobe or anything.)

Today I had my class in Photoshop web design, and it was a BLAST. I had so much fun and now desperately wish I could sign up to take the other Photoshop classes with this teacher instead of boring Excel and Access. (Someone in class told me that she'd talked the school into letting her take 10 classes in a year so she could do all of the Photoshop series, but then again she was the webmaster for her department and thus had an excuse. Alas, I have no such excuse. Waaah.)

Anyway, now I know how to fix up my pictures to go online without them hogging all the space. I really need to go through the pics remaining on sweetdisorder.com and resize them and then see how much space I have left after that! And 7.0 is fucking COOL. And the best part was this ImageReady program that came with it that not only helps you pick out the best size/image compromise, but lets you do animation! Totally cool! Check this out:

The reason why I'm so hyped for the animation was that after watching "Smile Time" I had an idea for an amusing animated LJ icon, but I had no idea how to do it. And so now that I could, I spent my lunch hour doing this (wait 30 seconds for the whole sequence to finish)...

I'm so proud of myself I could pop.

And in a final, disturbing coda that is so disturbing I simply must share it, here's a conversation I had with Mom during tonight's phone call:

Mom: "Did I ever send you the story about the fork?"

Me (who by now has long since stopped reading every single "cute" fucking forward Mom sends): "Huh?"

Mom: "Oh, there was this one story (friend of Dad's) sent me about this woman who said when she died, she wanted to be buried with a fork in her hand."

Me: "..."

Mom: "She said she wanted that because the best was yet to come and she wanted to be ready for it. You know, like holding on to your fork because of dessert coming."

Me: "..." (thinking, "Uh, death isn't dessert here, and this analogy is more than a little scary and twisted, not to mention so perky I feel like puking up my dinner.")

Mom: "So I got this napkin your aunt made me one time that I never used, and I got a fork and wrapped the napkin around it and put it in Granddaddy's ashes for him to be buried with! Isn't that great!"

Me: ".... ..... ....." (thinking, "Oh dear fucking God, she has cracked," and "This is so one of the reasons why I am not in favor of cremation.")

Mom: "What do you think?"

Me: "Uh...."

Mom: "Because I thought that was a great sentiment to send Granddaddy off with. It was the kind of thing he would have said."

Me: "Uh...." (thinking, "Uh, no, that wasn't the kind of thing he would have said at all...I mean, he liked candy, but he wasn't nearly that perky and optimistic.")

Me: "Because uh, I have issues with cremation in the first place, like every time I hear about someone's ashes being scattered I think of Monty Python spilling Graham Chapman's ashes all over the place or Cartman eating Kenny's ashes...and therefore something like this is uh, not something I want to think about."